Carp Fishing – Big French Catch for Dennis

Dennis with a stunning mirror of 44lb 8oz from his recent French trip.

Taska’s young Belgian consultant, Dennis Hellings, enjoyed a terrific haul of fish from a large, public French lake last week with five fish from 37 to 47lb.

Dennis tells the story in his own words:

"I fish some three times a year in France with my good friend Koen De Ruysscher and for this session, as with our previous ones, we fished a large, public lake in the north of the country.

When we arrived things didn’t look good because there had been no no catches reported, but with the weather changing in the right direction (+20 °c) we were still optimistic. The first night I bagged one fish and luckily it was a nice one in the shape of a 37lb 9oz mirror - not a bad start of the trip! We continued to bait up all of the areas with small Dreambaits BAM boilies and with great success as on the second night we bagged four fish and the numbers we netted increased every night of the trip.

When we started to catch some smaller fish I started baiting up more heavily, putting out up to 1.5 kg of freebies for each fish I caught. The tactic worked and at the end of our six nights, we had caught five fish over 33lb and four fish over 44lb.

Rig-wise we fished a soft coated hooklink to a size 4 hook with short shank Baseline Tungsten Line Aligners and 4mm Baseline Tungsten oval beads. Very pleased with that result, we packed up our gear and went home!"

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Comments (1 posted):

nicepix
on
14/05/2013 08:26:56

When I clicked on this link I was expecting a story about someone catching tame carp from one of the Carpadromes that have become increasingly popular over here. I was pleased to read that it was not so and they had extracted big fish from public waters. All credit to them.
I know from my own short experience over here how difficult these waters can be. A lot of the French anglers have absolutely no watercraft and their fishing spots are decided on where they can get their cars to the water's edge. This means that a few places get fished virtually 24/7 and other places on the same lake are barely fished and so carp rarely see bait. And these waters are huge by British standards. The ones near me are over 4km long. That leaves a lot of un-fished bank to reccie if you want to find a decent swim. Some of the bet places often don't come into the zones where night fishing is allowed.
All respect to the anglers. I'm impressed.